Touch-Tone Telephone
by Tords
Summary: A short one-shot exploring Touch-Tone Telephone by Lemon Demon.


div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"emstrongT/strong/emhere was a small neighbourbood in Lincoln County, Nevada, not so far away from the infamous Area 51, home to a rather peculiar young man who looked to be no older than 35. He was eccentric in both attire and in demeanour; he wore a black trenchcoat and bright purple slacks, complete with a pair of mismatched neon socks. The man's hair, naturally an ashy black, was equal parts disheveled and slick. He sat at a wooden desk littered with crumbled-up pieces of paper, most of which were covered in scribbles and dots and dashes. Each page told a different story, painting pictures of pentagrams; of crop circles; of aliens with big, black eyes; of men in black trenchcoats similar to his own./div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"His nimble fingers tapped away at the antique typewriter as he turned ideas into inky messes; words jumbled together, letters seemed to overlap, and with every chaotic page, it seemed to get worse. A mug of instant coffee that he had made hours ago had gone cold on his desk; he sipped on it occasionally, despite the fact that, with its lukewarm temperature and bitter taste, he may as well drink the ink with which he typed./div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"Time did not seem to exist here. Seconds ticked into hours ticked into...8pm. The only time that mattered. The man eagerly focused his attention to a bulky old-timey radio on his desk, turning the dial quickly and with a certain precision that suggested he had done this many times before. The sound of static pierced the air for a moment until the man was greeted by his best friend, whom he had never met before./div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;""Hey, welcome to episode fifty-two of The Unexplained," a deep voice said over the airwaves. That voice was so sweet, so familiar, so knowing. That voice had been his everything for the past seven years. "I'm Arthur Wallace, and if you've never listened in before, you're tuning in at a great time." Arthur addressed few members of his cult-like audience with this greeting, and the man in the trenchcoat was certainly not one of them. "Tonight I wanna talk about one of my favourite things ever: aliens." /div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"Arthur Wallace could have said that he was going to discuss the ethics of watching paint dry and the man would have been eager to listen, but the energy in the room changed as soon as the host mentioned aliens. As Arthur made conversation with himself about UFOs and recent sightings, the radio station's most avid (and possibly only) listener fumbled with some papers and his dial-up telephone; stray blueprints and sketches fell to the floor, but the man did not care. He was too focused on hearing his favourite phrase in the world: "...and if anyone has seen an alien or you have something to share, emyou can call in at-"/em The man was already on it; he knew the number by heart. His fingers skillfully turned the dial to the numbers he had memorized years ago, and the sweet sound of ringing greeted him. /div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;""Hey," Arthur soon greeted, sounding surprised to have received a call, "you're on The Unexplained. What's your story?" The man rejoiced by excitedly clapping his hands, and he responded without missing a beat. "I'm Dexter...and I've got it emall/em figured out," he said excitedly. "What do you mean?" The host replied; the voice on the other end of the line sounded very familiar to him, but he could not place it. "I've got a theory, and, trust me, it all makes sense. It all comes back to aliens," Dexter announced; his speech sounded rehearsed, like he had repeated this in the mirror a million times. (He had.) "They're out there, and it all connects. The Alien Big Cats from Britain are direct descendants of aliens from outer space, and the government is trying to hide their existence from us. Actually - listen - that's what Area 51 is for! They do experiments on them there..." /div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"Blah, blah, blah, and then...silence. Painful, judgmental silence. "Oh...yeah, I see." Arthur did not sound impressed; he was a conspiracy theory AM radio show host, and this was almost too crazy for emhim/em. As Dexter spoke, Arthur noted that the voice was eerily similar to the man who had called in three times last week... but Arthur was almost certain he had not gone by Dexter. A strange coincidence, perhaps, that the men who called in all had similar voices... but, oh, well, he thought little of this happenstance; nothing really surprises a conspiracy theorist. "That's... interesting, thanks for your call. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show." Arthur emalmost/em wanted to hear him out, but he was suffocated by a one-hour time slot, and could not afford to waste another second of it on a call from a debatably psychotic freak. "Wait, don't hang up, I'm not-" Beep. emFuck./em/div  
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div dir="auto" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"Dexter was almost tempted to cry; this was another letdown, another hangup, another rejection - but he could not stop here. He was right about everything; he was certain about that, and he emwould/em be heard...after all, he thought, tomorrow was a new start: a new name, a new finding, a new topic, and another 8pm call on his touch-tone telephone./div 


End file.
